Book Event: A Lie of Reinvention; Correcting Marable’s Malcolm X

A dialogue and multimedia presentation on this new book with essays by Mumia Abu-Jamal, veteran journalist A. Peter Bailey, who worked with Malcolm X’s Organization for Afro-American Unity, and Bill Strickland, who also knew Malcolm X.

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A Lie of Reinvention: Correcting Manning Marable’s Malcolm X is a response to Manning Marable’s biography of Malcolm X, A Life of Reinvention. Marable’s book was controversially acclaimed by some as his magna opus. At the same time, it was denounced and debated by others as a worthless read full of conjecture, errors, and without any new factual content. In this collection of critical essays, editors Jared Ball and Todd Steven Burroughs lead a group of established and emerging Black scholars and activists who take a clear stance in this controversy: “Marable’s biography is at best flawed and at worst a major setback in American history, African American studies, and scholarship on the life of Malcolm X.”

In the tradition of John Henrik Clarke’s classic anthology William Styron’s Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond, this volume provides a striking critique of Marable’s text. In 1968, Clarke and his assembled writers felt it essential to respond to Styron’s fictionalized and ahistorical Nat Turner, the heroic leader of one of America’s most famous revolts against enslavement. In A Lie of Reinvention, the editors sense a different threat to an African American icon, Malcolm X. This time, the threat is presented as an authoritative biography. To counter the threat, Ball and Burroughs respond with a barbed collection of commentaries of Marable’s text.

Join us for a provocative multimedia presentation and what will certainly be a lively dialogue led by editors, Dr. Ball and Dr. Burroughs about this book that includes essays by Mumia Abu-Jamal, veteran journalist A. Peter Bailey, who worked with Malcolm X’s Organization for Afro-American Unity, and Bill Strickland, who also knew Malcolm X and other essays from all quarters of the Black community. Including younger scholars such as Kali Akuno, Kamau Franklin, Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua, Christopher M. Tinson, Eugene Puryear and Greg Thomas.

The book will be available for sale and a signing will follow the discussion.